The easiest way to generate more revenue is to increase your close rate. In this webinar Kyle will discuss tips in each area of your sales process: The Initial Phone Call: What you must do to make a great first impression, 5 Powerful Words When Talking With A Remodeling Prospect, The In-Person Meeting: How to prepare, what to bring, and the approach you should take, and No Project Left Behind: Your lead tracking, sales pipeline, and follow-up system. Get ready for this fast-paced and informative webinar to help you close more sales!
Kyle Hunt is a business coach for remodelers and the owner of Remodel Your Marketing. He offers 1on1 coaching on the topics of marketing, your sales process, and helping you understand and improve your business financials. He leads professional mastermind groups of non-compete remodelers through his Remodelers Circle program, and offers courses/training all focused on helping you achieve your business goals and the work/life balance you desire. Kyle resides in Michigan with his wife, Sarah, and their four children. You can learn more about Kyle here or listen to his podcast, Remodelers On The Rise, here.
Thanks for joining us, Sergei.
Cool. Alright. I'm ready to rock, 11:01. Let's reward the people that show up on time and get rocking. Awesome!
Alright. Take it away, Kyle.
Alright. Cool. So as as Alex mentioned, he's kinda manning the chat box side of things. Don't be shy.
I love to hear your questions. And in addition to that, I love to hear your takeaways. The reason that you are investing time on this, the reason, frankly, that Clear Estimates is putting these on is not so that you can be filled with just more information or more things to do, but the reason is is to improve your business, which means in order to improve your business, you don't do that just through knowledge. You do that through implementation.
So whenever I do any teaching, I'm always focused on takeaways, and I love for you guys to share takeaways with me, as we go. So please, please don't be shy. I interact quite a bit. Just real quickly about me.
My name is Kyle Hunt. I'm the owner of Remodel Your Marketing. I started that back in two thousand and eight. I work exclusively with remodelers around the country, and there's three main areas that I help remodelers with.
One is marketing plan development.
Two is helping transform your sales process, which is where we're going to be focused today. And three is to help you understand and improve your financials.
And make sure whenever that one with Michael Stone is coming up with markup and profit, tune in for that one. Michael is an expert and just a really, really solid and smart guy. Live in Michigan with my wife and four kids, and, happy to be here. Thanks for having me back. So what we're going to dig into today are four areas of the sales process. One is the initial phone call that we have with a remodeling prospect, the before and during and after that.
Two is, five powerful words when we talk to a prospect, which is how we work. We're going to dig into our process.
Number three, the in person meeting that you have with the homeowners, with the customer. And number four, how are we tracking our leads? How do we have our sales pipeline organized? How do we effectively follow-up?
So, frankly, each one of these is an hour long webinar. If we really wanted to dive in, what I actually ended up doing was went through hour long webinars I did on each of these topics and whittled them down to what I see is most important. So you guys are getting kind of the condensed version of each of these and just really the most golden of the golden nuggets. So we'll spend, you know, ten, fifteen minutes in each section. We'll leave a little time for q and a at the end.
Buckle your seat belt. We're going to get rocking.
Alright. So first things first. The initial phone call with a remodeling prospect. What do we do before, during, after this initial call?
And it's a small part of the process that we're going to put a good amount of attention on. And the reason for that is I would argue and and this is, again, coming from somebody who's been in the trenches of sales process improvement for contractors, for modelers for the last decade plus, that this part of the process is sometimes I waffle on it, and I just say is one of the most important. But if I'm feeling frisky, I'll say is the most important part of the process, the most important part of the sales process. And it's a step that a lot of you neglect and kinda skim over.
And the reason I want to kinda rattle off some of the reasons why I say this is the most important part of the process.
Question.
Question that you are able to give to a prospective client. Don't undervalue that. You know, there's a reason that they say there's never a second chance to make a first impression. Remember, this is your first interaction with them.
It's an opportunity for you to learn about them and their projects. It's a chance for you to start qualifying them. We need to protect our most valuable asset, which is our time. And this initial phone call, when done properly, can help you with that.
It is to show them that we're organized, that we have a process.
That's something that homeowners crave. We're going to get into that later. This this initial call is our opportunity to to lay out our process and explain how we work, to elegantly lead them through the call, not in a pushy way, but in an elegant way to uncover exactly what they're what they're looking for and to really pay attention to the little things to get to know, who they are in their project.
It's an opportunity to if we do it a certain way, which we're going to get into as well to perhaps ask them what their budget or what they're looking to invest in the project is. This is your opportunity to track your marketing and find out clearly how they found out about you. And my questions for you are, are you distracted during this call, or are you focused?
Are you driving around when making what I would say as a sales coach and expert in this area is the most important part of the process? Are we driving around and just kinda having an I'm I'm empathetic to that. We're busy, but I would say we've gotta be focused. Don't be distracted while doing this initial call.
Are you truly listening to them? Are you asking great questions? Are you differentiating yourself, and do you sound different than anybody else they might be talking to? Do they sense that we care?
Are we friendly? Are we professional?
There's just so much packed into this call that it is important for us to continue to get better and better at it, to improve with every new prospect initial phone call that we do. So a few kinda ideas and tips related to this. We're going to go through the before, the during, and the after. A lot of times, I see my clients or or a typical contractor modeler will receive a lead even if it's via a voice mail or an email that gets submitted, and it's important that we call them back quickly. That's good solid customer service, but don't immediately pick up the phone and call them back right away. Not so fast. What we want to do is we want to do just a little bit of research on the prospect and their home.
We have technology at our fingertips that a remodel or a nineteen seventy two or eighty three or, frankly, nineteen ninety two would love to have.
And if you're a good and professional salesperson, you're going to want to do a little bit of research, a few minutes of research before you call them back. It would be foolish given the technology that we have now to not find out what you can about the prospect, and their home before you speak with them. So a few ideas related to this. One is LinkedIn. If you search on LinkedIn and find out they're an engineer versus a financial planner, is that helpful information to know?
Without ever saying so, you know, I I saw you're an engineer and and freaking them out. We don't have to go down that road.
You just gather this information, have it in your back pocket because that's going to impact your selling approach. If we were to go through your experience, there's a difference between an engineer and, let's say, a stay at home mom. The way that you approach selling them would be different. The engineer, a lot of times, is very detailed. They're going to want to know the granular details of the process.
When we know more about the prospect, we can sell them better. Right? That's just smart sales work. You can also find out if they've worked in the same place or the same area for two years or twenty years.
You can read their recommendations on LinkedIn. Do people love to work with them? Do you have any mutual connections with them? It's another key thing to look at.
If we cruise on over to Google and Google Maps, if you search on Google, you can go to Google Maps. You can zoom in on Google Earth, and you can see the home. Has it had an addition added to it? Is the is the home right next to the property line?
Go to the street view. Does the neighborhood look well maintained and sharp? Is it an older neighborhood, a newer neighborhood? Stop and think.
Do you have any previous clients in that area? That would be good information to share with them and just have in your mind. Go to Zillow. Quick stop on Zillow is going to give you a ballpark idea of the home value.
Wouldn't be a bad idea to have that. And, also, you can just click a few, you know, buttons down and you're going to be able to see if the house was recently bought or sold. That's helpful information to know. And, you know, and so far this has taken me a couple minutes.
One more idea of the before is to go on Facebook.
Now this is getting a little bit more on the personal side of things, but I had a a remodeler reach out to me not too long ago. I looked up their name on Facebook. I got to see their picture plus twenty other pictures. I know they have kids.
I know they're married. I I know they celebrated a major anniversary this year. I know they're big tigers, Detroit tigers fan. I know about how old they are.
I saw a couple of common interests on there. I got a feel for, quote unquote how they roll. Right? What their lifestyle is like.
Saw some of their posts. They seem like pretty friendly polite people. Had a mutual friend, industry colleague that both of us are friends with. And I just did that for a couple minutes.
Some people call could call that Facebook stalking if you want to have a negative connotation to it. I call it being a professional salesperson who has resources at his fingertips.
Now the key is, especially when it comes to the Facebook, I believe it's wise to do this research. It arms me with a lot of information on who they are, but you're playing with a little bit of fire. It would be foolish for me to say, how about them tigers? Or did you guys enjoy your trip to the Rocky Mountains last year?
That's weird. Right? That would be weird. You know, how do I know that?
It would be odd. Right? But can I have it in my back pocket? Can I bring it up in a discreet way?
Sure. This is very similar to when you, are pulling up to the home. Do you take note of bumper stickers? Do you take note of the type of car they drive?
Do you look for what flag they're flying out in their front yard, whether it's a Michigan Wolverine's flag like it should be or a Spartan's flag? Right? That's just good sales. So we want to do a little bit of research.
Just be a great salesperson. Do your homework. Use the tools that you have at your disposal, but use them responsibly. Don't freak people out.
Don't make them scratch their head and say, how did you know about that? But also don't just totally ignore this opportunity.
Alright? So those are just a few steps before the call is even made. Do a little bit of research.
The second thing is during the initial call, and I just have five quick tips I wanted to share with you guys, related to this.
So the first one is get in the right mindset.
And I I talked about that a little bit at the top of the of the conversation here. Be one hundred percent focused on the call. Don't be multitasking. Don't be driving. Be one hundred percent into it.
Who here, if I may, if you can put in the chat box, who here in the last month has done their initial phone call, maybe not all the time, but at least once while they're driving, nothing else in front of them. They're just having this conversation.
You can either write yes or guilty as charged or something like that in the chat box.
Alright. Do that, please.
I'm going to wait until I see one of them. One kind soul say, yeah. That's me.
K. I'm on. You see it yet, Alex? They sometimes take a minute to come in.
Yeah. We'll give them a minute. Yes. We are on, like, a eight second delay.
Kevin, Edward. Oh, is that how is there a little like, how many second delay is it?
Yeah. There's an eight second delay between us and the audience.
Good to know. Now it's cruised in.
So they're right on point.
Good. It's happened. Right? So it's important. What I'm emphasizing here, don't be multitasking. Again, I'm empathetic.
You guys have a lot on your plate, but this is important, and you've gotta be focused and thinking. And, you know, when you're talking to somebody on the phone and they're typing, they're reading something, you can tell in a heartbeat that they're doing that, that they're not fully into it. And, boy, when you have somebody's full attention, you can feel it. It just had a different energy on the phone.
You know? Can you smile on this call? You can see a smile through the phone. Be friendly.
Be upbeat. This is their first interaction with you. Stand out. Be different.
K.
Number two is project discovery sheet. So once your focus not distracted, make sure you're not pulling out a blank sheet of paper, but rather you have a process, something like a a project discovery sheet. This is a resource I'll send, Alex, I'll send you over several different resources that we can post on the recording page. This will be one of them.
Just a a a simple solid form of the different questions that you want to make sure you're asking, which we'll get into here a little bit. The big thing here is we need to follow a process and something to remind you of questions to ask, something to make sure you're not forgetting, anything, something you're able to hand off to somebody else in your team so that you're organized. Do not pull out a blank sheet of paper. Have a process for this initial call.
Number three, what's the goal of the call? And, certainly, it perhaps is to schedule an in person, appointment if that makes sense. Maybe it's to qualify them out, but I wanted just to emphasize one thing that is not such a common answer to this.
The goal of this initial call is to serve the person on the other end of the line to help the person on the other end of the line. You are to be listening, to guide them, to do it with excellence, to be focused and into it. There is so many crummy contractors out there. There's so much bad information about how the process works.
If you approach this call not so much of, like, what's in it for me and is this a good lead, but how can I serve and help this person? Maybe that's going to be you. Maybe you're going to refer them to somebody else. Maybe you're going to get to the budget question, and you're going to educate them on that, and you're going to need to teach them and explain them why it is.
You know, what maybe the range that you shared. But approaching this call with that in mindset of how can I serve them, how can I help them versus what's in it for me is a slight tweak and change, but a very powerful one? When I'm talking to a pros a prospect or remodeler, if I have it in my mind, you know, what kind of sale is this, and how big is this client going to be? That's when I'm at my worst.
When I have it in my mind of simply how can I serve them, and certainly, if it makes sense for me to introduce them to my services, but how can I help them is such a better way to approach this call? So I wanted to remind you guys of that. Number four, make sure it is much more them talking than you talking.
If if it was, you know, percentage, I would kinda break it down into seventy percent them talking, thirty percent you talking. But as we all know, forty two percent of all statistics are made up.
Alex, that's funny.
Thank you. Whether that was a courtesy laugh or not, thank you for that. So I don't know if it's exactly seventy percent or thirty percent is what I'm getting at there. But if it's the other way around where you're talking seventy percent of the time and them talking thirty percent of the time, you're not asking enough questions.
So, you know, analyze that a little bit as you're going through this initial call. Make sure that you're asking a lot of questions and the majority of it is them talking, not necessarily us talking. And number five related to this initial phone call is make sure when you're done with it, you do just a a quick little recap, you know, on your own of what worked and what didn't work. Frankly, this is an idea.
I you know, I'm always asking, like I mentioned earlier, takeaways, takeaways, takeaways. This could be your takeaway from the presentation, because this can work after a project is completed, after an in person salesperson, after the initial phone call, different steps in the process. If you just take a minute and think, what worked about that? You know what?
It was great that I I got into that question related to you know, they mentioned that they just moved here from somewhere. Instead of me just bypassing that and moving on to the next question, I asked them where, and it ended up we had kind of a mutual connection or we had a, you know, whatever the case might be or what didn't work. Man, they just kinda mowed me over. They took over the conversation.
I felt like I had to go out there. I didn't get a chance to, you know, to really qualify them or ask a lot of questions. It felt rushed. I should have asked right from the top.
Hey. Do you have ten or fifteen minutes to talk right now? And if they didn't, to schedule a time. So do a quick look at what worked, what didn't work at the end of every call.
K?
And then I'm going to, kinda rapid fire through here a little bit because on that project discovery sheet that you guys can have access to, you'll see these different questions on here. But make sure you have them written out, the different questions that you want to ask a prospect when you're having an initial call with them. Some of the questions that I just want to share with you that maybe you grab one that, you know what? That's a good question.
Or, you know what? I used to ask that. I haven't been, or maybe you've never asked it. So a few of them.
How long have you lived in the home?
Have you ever remodeled before? If so, how was the experience? That's going to give you tremendous insight into how they have been before, if it was a bad experience and kinda dig in a little bit when they say, yeah. We remodeled our kitchen.
Well, tell me about it. How did it go? Well, you know, the finished product was really good, but, you know, end up taking a lot longer than we had hoped for. Oh, I'm going to write that down or you know, but it ended up costing a lot more than what we were originally quoted.
I am writing that down because that is a fear that they have. That is a concern that they have. So there's a lot you can learn from that question. How long do you plan on staying in the home?
Are you talking to any other contractors about your project? When are you thinking of starting your project?
The big one is not a question. It's more of a statement, but tell me about the project. This should be a big bulk of your initial call of really getting details into what their project looks like and the scope of it. And the goal here is you want to ask enough questions.
Let's say it's a kitchen remodel. You want to ask enough questions so that by the end of you asking questions, you have a clear picture in your head of what this project looks like. There's other projects that you've done that are coming to mind. You understand that we're going to stay in the same footprint.
We're not moving any walls. We're not moving plumbing. You're getting a feel for the size of it. And as you ask questions, there's more clear of a picture forming in your head of what this project looks like.
I would say seventy five percent of the time for my remodeling clients, they're able to get that clear picture in their head. And when you have that clear picture in your head, the other thing that can start to formulate in your mind is kind of a budget range of where this project might come in at. You know, you're going to start saying, okay. That's similar to Smith Java, similar to that.
You know, it's you know, be able to have, like, kind of that forty to sixty thousand dollar range in your head. And when we talk about what questions to ask, once you have that clear pitch in your head and not before, we can ask, you know, what are you looking to invest in this project, or what is your budget for this quest for this project? It is a very powerful qualifying question. And, again, here clearly, you need to have that picture in your head before you ask that question because a lot of times you'll get, oh, I'm not sure.
That's why I'm reaching out to you. Or I don't know. I was thinking this would be, like, a fifteen thousand dollar project. You're able to follow-up by saying, you know, based on my years of experience, based on the projects that you're describing to me, this project's going to range anywhere, you know, from forty to sixty thousand dollars.
And then you be quiet. That pause there, that dramatic pause was me telling you to, shh, be quiet.
Because they're going to respond either, boy, I didn't think you really? And then you go into education mode. You explain. You start to teach them about it.
Explain the big range. You know, there's a lot of decisions to make. There's a lot of selections. There's a lot of good, better, best fixtures, etcetera.
That's why there's a big range. And then you can go into how we put together design a proposal to, you know, to to narrow that range down, and this is how our process works. You know? Or they say, you know what?
That's kinda what we were expecting. That's great to know as well. And then we kinda continue to move through the process. So those are a few of the questions.
And that last one, I I I tried to talk a little slower and kinda present that a little bit. That's a big question. If you guys have some follow-up questions on how do I get budget? Kyle, you made it sound easy, but, man, I've been butchering that or it's difficult to get that out of them.
We can circle back during the q and a time related to that.
Alright? And then one thought after. So we talked about before, during the initial phone call. Talking about after, make sure that between that initial phone call and if it does proceed to an in person appointment, make sure we're getting out a professional email in between that initial phone call and the in person appointment.
And, Alex, if you want to jot this down, I'm happy to share an example of this email. And there's nothing fancy about it. It's really just saying we look forward to meeting with you soon. Our meeting is scheduled for this date and time.
If you have any questions in the meantime, reach out, and here are a few links and resources we would like you to review. You know, link them to our website, link them to Houzz, maybe you link them to the cost versus value report from Romali magazine if that's a good fit in your area. There's a document titled what to expect at our first meeting. That is a great little framework for that initial meeting.
So make sure that between that time of the phone call and the in person meeting, we get out just a nice simple professional appointment confirmation email. Two things this does several things this does. One is you tell them you're going to send that before you get off the phone, and here's just a little example of I said I was going to do this, and I actually followed through on it. Homeowners are looking for that.
They're looking for somebody they can trust and that stands behind their word. And secondly, nobody else is doing this. Man, these guys are organized. They have a process.
They've got their steps down. It's a simple thing, but it's an impressive thing.
K?
So that was our little fifteen minutes related to number one, which is the initial phone call, kind of the before, during, and after. So I'll pause there just for a little water slash.
Share a takeaway or something like that man, I'm going to use that or that was a good reminder or even a question. We might save the question for later, but just want to take a moment to just capture a few takeaways from that first part.
And, Kyle, just to your your previous point there, when you send an email after the call, I think it's super excuse me, important to include the references on there.
Mhmm.
You know, your house profile, any type of work that you do, almost like sending them a digital portfolio, you know, including legitimacy of your business, showing them the type of work that you do, see if the work kinda lines up with what the customer is looking for.
Absolutely. That visual aspect is always important to the customer.
Different and different and just differentiate it. You know, something about being in our industry that stinks is it's got a fairly bad reputation. There's a lot of people out there doing a bad job for homeowners. But the good news on that is when we are organized, when we're just a little bit organized and we're standing out, we stand out head and shoulders above everyone else.
You know, there's something to be said for show up on time, call back when you say you're going to do, and then you layer some of these other little things. Running a successful contracting remodeling business is a combination of a lot of little things. The the top ten percent in our industry that are just kicking butt and taking names, they don't have some magic bullet. They're just executing on all of these little things to help differentiate them, to help build value, to help them stand out.
So it's just a reminder. These little things are are very important.
Kevin, like the follow-up email idea. Awesome. So keep do we go? We're going to roll into, the second section here, which is how we work.
Alright. So there's five powerful words when talking to a remodeling prospect. This is how we work. And the two main things I want to cover in this section is, one, I want you to develop a written remodeling process that you can share with prospects, a written remodeling process that you can share with your prospects, and I'll go through what that looks like.
And then number two, especially if you're doing bigger projects, kitchen projects, additions, even basements, bathrooms, I want you to consider or continue to use if you already have it, a design retainer or a project development agreement. This is probably the topic that a lot of people have, a lot of thoughts on. Kyle, I can't do that in my area. I've tried that.
It doesn't work. Others that say, I can't imagine life without it. So I want to present that to you guys and encourage you, especially if you're not doing it, to consider it or if you are doing it to, continue to fine tune it. So the first part of the written remodeling process, what I'm referring to here is something the prospective remodeling client can view to show them what the process is.
Homeowners crave a process. We want to give it to them, and we want to make it clear. We want to make it easy, have it written out. It puts them at ease.
It makes their choice easier when we're very clear, and we have less confusion. It's much easier for us to say yes or to buy something. Remodeling is not something that people do every year. It's something that happens, you know, several times in a lifetime.
You know, and what is the education? What is the, expectation they have? Well, they've watched a lot of HGTV, so it's going to cost fifteen grand. It's going to take two weeks.
There's probably going to be a disaster about three quarters of the way through. Right? Their education is from watching it. We love HGTV because it gets people interested in remodeling.
We don't like it because it really sets a false expectation of what this process is really like. So we need to educate them. We need to explain to them step by step, how this is going to work.
Alright?
Also, when you have a process, it helps you feel in control. It gives you confidence.
I was right before this call from nine thirty, ten thirty this morning, I was talking with one of my clients down in South Carolina. He's a new client. This is actually the second meeting we've had, and this is the part that we're working on to start with is his sales process. And he was very close already before we started working together on implementing a professional services agreement, project development agreement, design retainer, however you want to call it.
And, man, just by having his process written out, his confidence level, just skyrocketed very quickly. So having your process written out where you can present it to a homeowner, say, this is how we work step by step. This is what to expect. It helps you tremendously, with your own confidence.
So the basic steps of this, when I say creating our process document that you can present to homeowners, that you can have on your website, that you can include in that initial email, is a lot of times it just looks like this. There's the initial phone call stage of things. There's the initial in person meeting.
There's a preliminary design or estimate or proposal.
There's a detailed design and budget.
There's the, I put construction phase, but sometimes we have in between there kind of the preconstruction conference. We like to highlight that and show them that. We've got the construction phase, and then we got the completion. What happens after the job is done? You every one of you have a process right now. I would say one out of forty of you have it written out.
And I'm telling you, it's very, very valuable to just have out this is how we work step by step through the process. I have a couple examples that that I, will link to in the next slide, but here's an example of just the initial in person meeting. What would I write underneath that part of the process? You can simply say something like this. At our next meeting, we will listen to what you like and don't like about your current home, listen to your goals, needs, and desires, talk about different possibilities design wise, etcetera, take preliminary measurements, discuss what you're looking to invest in your project, and depending on what your next step is, either review and execute a design agreement or review and execute a professional services agreement or proceed to the estimate stage, whatever it is for you. Again, each one of you have a process.
Write this out. Write this out.
K.
This next thing, couple just examples. So if you see these slides or you guys will be able to go back to them, but just two of my clients. One, Lincoln renovations dot com, Nate's Custom Renovations. Long time client of mine.
You can see what his, his process is there. And then when my clients here in Michigan, Lloyd's cabinet shop, you can see what that looks. And what you're going to find is a little bit of difference. But in the case of Lloyd's, you're going to see there's a phone conversation, mentions their design fee at the bottom of each page of this written out.
There's an in home consultation. There's custom design and proposal. There's the proposal review meeting, and then we determine the next step, and then it moves into preconstruction, construction, completion.
Step by step, it just explains to the homeowner what to expect. It's a very simple but very powerful and rarely used sales tool and marketing tool, for your business.
Alright. So let me pause there. I saw a question.
Let's hold, let's hold that. I'm just looking at it, Alex. Why don't we hold that one for later? That way we definitely have one question during the q and a time.
Cool?
John, we haven't forgotten you. We'll just take care of it later.
There we go. That way John will for sure stay on the line because he will not want to miss his question and be an answer because I got a good I got a good answer to it. Alright. So the second part of this, there's in this in person, meeting prep, the next one is consider or continue to use a design retainer or project development agreement.
Again, we're we're going to be kinda cooking through this, but if anything, it's either going to confirm some things you're thinking about or wet your appetite to dig into this topic more. Alright? So there's a lot of different names for this. I've even shared a few of them, like project development fee, design retainer, design agreement, professional services agreement, partner plan, lot of different ways that we can go about it.
But the thought here is we have to protect your time, and there is a service that you offer in putting a detailed especially if you're doing design, this is even much more clear. But even if you're just developing the project, you guys can give free estimates.
Continue to give free estimates based on my years of experience, based on describing this job, based on seeing this job, based on, projects that are coming to mind that are very similar in scope and size to this, this project's going to range anywhere from seventy five to a hundred thousand dollars.
There's your free estimate. And a lot of times, you guys have been doing this long enough that you're able to do that. Yes. There's going to be certain projects that are more complicated in additions where you might not be able to have a range quickly, but the majority of the time you're able to do that. That is a free estimate.
Continue to do that. Continue to offer free estimates. What you need to stop doing is offering deep design, detailed proposals, detailed specifications, guaranteed budget, and not charging for that service.
You're putting so much time into design or estimating, securing your trade partner bids, doing the walk throughs, spending hours thinking through the labor side of things for your own self performed work, preparing detailed proposals, you know, helping if you're doing it right. We know that if we can make these selections upfront before the contract is signed, boy, is the project going to go on time and on budget a lot more. So when they're investing some money with us to walk them through this process, we're able to walk them through and help them with some of the selections and searching and getting that sorted out.
We're meeting with the clients. We're creating the proposal. We're making edits. There's a lot of work that goes into this.
And my thought for you here is to charge for it, charge for this service.
Maybe it's just four hundred dollars. Maybe it's three hundred dollars. Maybe it's one percent of the low end of the budget.
Maybe it is, you know, whatever the number is, especially just getting started, just doing something and explaining to them that this is a win win win. We're happy to give you a free estimate, but our next part in the process, when we get into the design and the detailed proposal and more of a guaranteed budget, we do charge for that service. And, oh, by the way, if you move forward with us, we roll that into your initial down payment.
Right?
K.
So a few things here. We're talking about charging for the design, so the estimate. I went through some of those names there.
Reminder, your time is valuable. If you're out there doing all of this work free of charge, you are going to be running, running, running, and it's going to impact your work life balance. It's going to impact your family life. It's going to impact the other clients that you're working with when you're chasing everything that's going on.
K? I just went through all of those different things that you do. There is a service here. There is a value here.
It's a win win for everyone because when they raise their hand and say, you know what? That makes sense. It's a little thousand nine and the proposal here, I'm willing to invest that six hundred dollars, towards your project development agreement so that we do this right. So the project happens on a schedule, on time.
And you can tell them, you know, by doing this, this allows me to invest more time with you. And we do this, and we've implemented this into our business so that we protect our time, and we're working with clients who understand our process and value the the service that we offer here.
Some additional thoughts. Yes. It's possible in your area.
If nobody else is doing it, frankly, that might be a good differentiator for you.
And by the way, even if you don't think people are doing it, they are. This has really been more heavily embraced over the last few years.
The other thing is try it. Once you what I've seen time and time again with my remodelers is they go from kinda zero percent to ten percent confidence in this to presenting it and explaining it and getting somebody that says, yep. Okay. That makes sense. No. I understand that.
Who do I make the check out to? And you leave the home with a four hundred and fifty dollar check, and you go, oh, crap.
Why have I not been doing this years ago? And your confidence goes from zero or ten percent up to seventy percent in a hurry, and you just continue to get better and better at it. It is such a critical part to being able to deliver a great experience to your homeowners.
And I'll share a few examples in the resources I send over to you. And this is a great topic for our q and a time as well.
Cool. So I'm going to keep on, I'm going to keep on cruising, and then we're, we'll circle back to, the other side. I got some notes from Amanda and CJ. We'll circle back to those. So this next one, the in person meeting.
The in person meeting. So a few items related to this. Some of them are just going to be reminders for you. Some of them might be a little bit of something new. When you're preparing for this in person meeting, do not underestimate just the physical preparation.
Clean looking vehicle.
Look sharp. Don't show up in your hoodie. Mikhail, I was working on the field this morning. Bring a button down with you. You know, there's places you can run and change your clothes. Look sharp. That matters.
Clean up. That matters.
Making sure you have your marketing materials, your samples organized and ready to go before you arrive.
You know, make sure that you are put physically put together well. Continue to evaluate that. Think about how we could be sharper? How could we look more organized? How could we be more professional?
The second one here, just your mental preparation.
You know, what does it take for you to be focused and ready?
You know, is that music? There's some music that just gets you fired up on the drive there. You need to turn off your phone. You need to just have kind of a quiet moment to yourself. Do you review their paperwork just to remind yourselves of their names and some of the details before you walk in?
The point is similar to the initial call we have with the new prospect, we want to be a hundred percent focused. This is the most valuable work that you can be doing. You're building know, like, and trust with a client. Make sure you bring your a game.
I think if we are honest, there's times where we are not five p'ing this meeting. Five p. Somebody wants to ask me what that means, ask me for the q and a time. What does five p mean?
I'll tell you about it. But there's times where we are bringing our b game or b minus game. We had a bad morning. We're showing up to this home, and we're distracted or we're not focused.
And I just want to remind us that we need to bring our a game, and then I wrote p s, b on time.
How to prepare? Look around. Right? When you're pulling up, check out the neighborhood.
Any other clients in there? Any stories you have from that neighborhood? What are the other homes like? How does theirs compare their home?
You notice any recent updates? Is it worn out? Is it lawn well taken care of? What about their cars?
Any boats, toys, bumper stickers? Maybe there's some common interest there. Kids' stuff. You can get a feel for how many kids they have just by pulling up.
Flags. I mentioned that earlier. Spartan flag, Wolverine flag. Just pay attention when you're pulling up.
There's there's probably some common, maybe some common interest that might build some know, like, and trust. Again, marketing and sales is getting someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you. And when you're paying attention, when your antenna is up, when you're bringing your a game, you're paying attention to these little things. So you all know that.
This is kind of a reminder for that.
Alright?
And then next, just the approach that you should take.
This final, this final part is some several different ideas related to this. So one is connect. Try to find some common ground at this initial in person meeting. Try to get to know them. Pick on something, you know, pick up something, in their house or yard that you notice to to bring up.
Maybe something you already talked about on the phone.
You're just just trying to connect and not get squarely and only, down to business. Number two, what's the goal or outcome for today? Just like that, this is how we work and our process is important.
Starting this meeting with explaining to them, you know, this is kind of the goal or what we're going to look to accomplish today. Is it you giving a ballpark range? Is it you explaining understanding the project, sharing ideas, and then telling them what you think the next step could be and if they're on board with that? Alright?
So get clear with that upfront. What's the goal or outcome for today and share that with them. Lead the conversation. Lead the meeting.
The third one is just do your thing. Like, be the expert. Ask a lot of questions. The bulk of this is just for you to really look at their home, treat it as if you were your own, what would you do, and don't hold back.
What kind of I do design work. I don't want to share all those ideas because if I share a bunch of ideas, they might be talking to somebody else, and that next person might, you know, might steal that idea.
No. Don't hold back. Give them value. You know what's going to convince them more that you're the right person or that you bring value or that you're different than everybody else is for you to share excellent ideas.
You know what I found in my business? The more ideas I give away, the more I share, the more I teach, the more people go, man, that's a good idea. Kinda like implemented that and it worked. You know what happens?
It's good for business. People want to do business with me because I've provided value. So don't hold back. Share your ideas.
Share your creativity. Share your expertise, and don't be shy with that.
The next one here, just a few several other things at this in person meeting. Make sure that we do a little process check on, you know, what's the next step. Make sure again that at the end of this meeting, you'd let them know, you know, here's where we are in the process, and here's what the next step would be. If a next appointment is on the docket, make sure you book that next appointment before you leave their home.
It's a simple thing, it's a small thing, but, man, can that be helpful. Maybe you're going to put together a little ballpark range. Maybe you are somebody who is going to put together a proposal for them. If that's the case, give yourself a little bit of a self imposed deadline and set a date for when you're going to meet with them again. Otherwise, it's going to be open ended, and all of a sudden five days turns into eight days, and then you finally get it done and you call them and they're out of town for three days. Book that next appointment before you leave.
Little thing, put a thank you card in the mail the next morning. It was so great to meet you guys. Thank you so much for the opportunity to look at this project. We look forward to whatever that next step is.
Nobody does that. I like to send it out after the initial in person meeting. I think it's got the most bang for the buck. If you've got somebody in the office, you can have them kinda prep this.
Put you know, have have kind of a simple kinda outline or template that you use, for each of these that you could easily fill in. Have your assistant have the address already there, stamped there to make it super easy for you to execute that.
Make sure at the end of the meeting, you're updating your sales pipeline, which we're going to talk about next. And then similar to what I advised you to do at the end of that initial, phone call, make sure you do a quick what worked and what didn't work. Telling you, that could be another again, a takeaway. If you just take four or five minutes, three minutes, two minutes to just think through, man, what worked on that? What didn't work on that? It can make a huge impact in you continuing to get better, continuing to get better.
Alright.
I need a water break, Alex.
You got a question for me? Or encourage them to write some takeaways in.
I was actually just typing in the chat box here that I'm noticing a trend, and it's following up with the customer. So whether it's after the initial call, after the initial meeting, we've gotta be following up with the customer. We want to have them thinking about us, thinking about our process, what's unique about our company. And then they can think about us after we've, you know, we've left. They're kind of prospecting the various sources where they may be able to get this work from. They look at our references. They look at our website.
And I know a lot of our customers have beautiful websites. So, you know, feel free to share that information in your follow-up correspondence. But the idea here I think Kyle's getting at is you want to remain in the customer's mind.
Mhmm.
You want to be at the top of their chart when it comes to who's going to get this work done.
So couple thing that's great. Yeah. That's great insight. A couple things that come to mind there is, if you look the same, talk the same, and act the same as all of your other competitors, and I'm looking at you and I'm looking at company b, again, you look, talk, and act the same. If I'm the homeowner, how am I going to decide between you and your your competitor?
Right.
Price. Literally, price is the only that would be the only thing. I'm going to go with the lower price. Everything so when you have Michael Stone on in a couple weeks and Michael teaches you guys how to properly price your work, and he says, this is how you calculate your markup, and you get in there, and you set up your business budget.
You get your top line revenue goal in place, you get very clear with what your expenses are and what your net profit goal is, and then you do this calculation that Michael has that he's done for decades and that works. And it says you need to have a markup of one point four two in order to pay for everything, in order to have a net income, and you go crap. I'm doing a one point two eight markup, and the numbers, which don't lie, are telling me I need to be at one point four two to really run a profitable business. Crap.
You know where you go then? You say, I've gotta be a better salesperson. I've gotta differentiate myself. I can't look, talk, act the same as everybody else.
I need to be different. I need to build value into things. And all the stuff we're talking here, excellence on the initial phone call, differentiating yourself, qualifying the leads, having a project development agreement that really gives them a service of getting all of those selections and design, walking them through the process, sending a thank you card out at the end of the meeting. You know what?
That thank you card is probably not going to be the reason they go with you, but is it going to play an impact into your know, like, and trust you've built with them? Man, these guys just their attention honey, I know they're more expensive, but I just feel like they're going to take care of us better, that this is going to be a better experience.
So, yes, to what you said, Alex, follow-up, and then you just sent me down a a little bit of a rant rabbit hole that I think also ties a lot of this stuff together. We're not doing this for, you know, just for fun. We're doing this to differentiate ourselves, to increase our closing percentage, to be different, to wow them, to build value so that they choose us. And we're able to do it at a markup and a profit that we need in order to to support our business and our employees and our family.
Right.
How you like them apples?
And one other thing, Kyle, to the, the first point there, which was just look sharp, you know, physical preparation. You know, some kind of company branded outfit, you know, just a polo with the company name on it, or a sweater, you know, if it's colder out. Just something super simple just to, you know, again, differentiate you.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I was expecting after that passionate rant to get, like, a, yeah, Kyle, or, like, a, amen, brother Kyle, or, like, a, you're right on, Kyle. You made me think, but I haven't seen anything in the chat box.
And we've added people since the last time I've looked. It's not like people are going away, so give me a little feedback there.
Alright.
I think we're just soaking in the knowledge, Kyle. That's alright.
That's alright. I'm just I like to I like the feedback, people.
Alright. So this last part of of this, and then we'll cruise to this, and we'll do a little q and a. So number four is lead tracking, sales pipeline, and follow-up.
John gave me a right on, Amanda. Amen, brother Kyle. That's good. Alright. Thank you. There we go.
Alright. Now I'm feeling good, Alex. Now we can keep moving. Alright.
So related to this last one, we're talking about the sales process, and I I'm I'm I'm kind of concluding it with I chose this part, which is our sales pipeline, how we're tracking our leads, and our follow-up. It is an area that is I see as a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of preach it. I like it. Preach it, brother. Alright, Edward. Here it comes.
Here we go, Kyle.
Here we go, Kyle. Talking. Hey now. There we go, Alex. Now you're getting into the spirit of it. So my main question is here is how well are we tracking our prospects, our lead sources, our follow-up activities?
And this is an area that I often see is just messy, is not very, just there's no process. There's no system to it. It could be a stack of folders on your desk, and, boy, when was the last time you pulled out that folder on the bottom? Or, you know what? I got a whiteboard in my office, but I I I I tried to get this organized, but then I kinda fell back off it, or I I tried to get a spreadsheet going.
We are often concerned about where's my next lead coming from? Am I generating new leads? Yet, we put a lot of time, energy, effort, money into generating new leads and then just kind of we go through maybe the proposal stage and we forget about them. We don't follow-up as often or as well as we should.
Things fall through the cracks. We end up taking too long to get them their design or their next step related to that. So this area and cleaning this up should be a priority for everybody. So I just have a few slides that kind of are hitting on some of these.
First one is what is your closing percentage? So far this year, you know, what is your closing percentage? Or if you go back into two thousand eighteen, what was your closing percentage for the whole year? This is good to know.
It helps us to understand if we're qualifying our leads enough, if, you know, we should consider going down that road of a project development fee. And frankly, it's just tried and true that what gets measured gets improved. We're actually measuring this number. If we're actually paying attention to this number, if we, over the course of months and years, start to understand this number, what gets measured gets improved.
We will get better at it. We will try to figure out ways to improve it. K. The second one is who are your top five active prospects?
These are so important. This is how you're going to keep revenue coming into your business and help build up your backlog. Are we clear and organized with who these top prospects are?
Do we have a good solid list? Are we thinking, you know, weekly, if not every other day, if not daily? What is that clear next step to do with these folks? Are we pushing them through? Are we working on setting up the next appointment? Are we, or are we just letting that that design or that that proposal or that that, that re that redesign or that reproposal or the tweaks or the edits, are we really staying on top of it? We've gotta make sure we're driving, we're driving that and thinking about the next step.
The next one is how many leads did you receive last year?
And secondly, where exactly did those leads come from? This is another what gets measured gets improved. You are spending money on marketing to generate leads. Every dollar you spend should be held accountable.
Meaning, is it working? Is it a positive ROI? Is it not working? When we are able to track how they heard us, which goes back to the project discovery sheet, if we're pulling on a blank sheet of paper asking the questions that come to mind, I guarantee a lot of times you will forget to ask how did you hear about us.
If you have a project discovery sheet, that question is going to be staring you at the in in the eyes, and you're going to remember it much more often. And then we need a simple spreadsheet or a simple tool to make sure that we are documenting and and tracking that information. But we need to know where our leads are coming from, how many leads we generated from each lead source that is such valuable information.
That could be a key takeaway. If you'd if you're not tracking this, if you're not paying attention to this, that could be your takeaway. I need to start go I need to go back to January one this year. We're only at the start of March. Maybe halfway through March, but, you know, go back to this year and make sure all of your two thousand nineteen leads were getting very clear with where those people came from, and tracking them. K?
The next one is, are there any prospects you need to follow-up with today? This is just a daily, weekly question that you should be ask you just always be asking, who do I need to follow-up with? This is some of your most valuable work to make sure it's organized. Make sure you're proactive. Make sure things aren't lingering out there or slipping through the cracks.
Alright? So my main thought here, my main question here for you is how well are you tracking your prospects, your lead sources, and your follow-up activities?
Like, literally write that down. How well am I tracking my prospects, my lead sources, and my follow-up activities? And how can I be better organized in this area?
Some of you might have, like, a CRM system. There's a lot of them out there. Market Sharp, improve at three sixty, HubSpot. There's all kinds of options out there. You know, a a pipeline kinda looks like this where you might have kind of appointment to be set stage, appointment slash working on proposal stage.
Maybe there's a design stage if you have that. Done proposal for, haven't signed. Who do you have in that bucket? Who do you have you’ve done a proposal for, and haven't signed?
Are all those people following up with you? Are you staying in touch with them? Who's in your jobs in progress section, meaning they've signed with us, but the job is not done? And who's in your completed job section for this year?
K. So so think about that. And if that's something that you have disorganized, one of the other resources, and, Alex, if you want to write it down, is a, a sales tracking spreadsheet that I will send over to you guys that just has a good way to get that section organized.
Perfect.
Alright. So decide how you're going to track your projects, your lead sources, and your follow-up.
Keep that up to date. Work hard on that. And then lastly is just your follow-up. Prospects have a thousand excuses.
I had to pay taxes this month. Call me back in the spring. We decided to hold off. We got other priorities, but give me a callback.
You know, my HVAC went out. Something came up. I forgot my kids' activities. I can't I mean, just there's a ton of different and a lot of times legitimate, sometimes weak excuses that they share.
We need to make sure that we're staying in touch with these people. And my thought here is make sure it's not just a phone call.
Like, most probably ninety percent of the phone numbers you have are cell phones. Don't be afraid to text them. Maybe you connected with them on Facebook or LinkedIn. Send them a message through there if you're if, you know, if you notice they're on there a lot.
Mail them something. Maybe you see something of value that, you know, hey. We talked a lot about job site cleanliness. What I wanted to send to you is our build clean system.
This is just information related to that. That could be done in an email. That could be linked in a text to your, you know, to your website. That could be just printed out and mail it to them.
Make sure that you're not just thinking follow-up is one thing and one thing only, which is picking up the phone and calling people. Frankly, for me, if you want to get a response from me, I'm a fairly busy guy. If you text me, I'll I'll be responding back. It's pretty much guaranteed that day I'll be responding back. If you call me, it's a lot more work for me to do that. All of a sudden, I'm like, man, it's going to be a five or ten minute conversation.
So everybody's a little bit different. Understand your prospect. Understand how they communicate, and make sure we're not giving up too soon when we're following up with prospects.
Alright.
Alright. So I'm going to cruise to the slides. What we covered? We did it. We still got a little time for q and a. I knew it was a lot. This would be a great one to kinda circle back and, and and listen to again.
There's going to be some resources that are part of it, but we went through these four items, the initial phone call, the before, during, and after. This is how we work and our process. We dug into that topic of project development agreements, design agreements, talked about some good best practices for the in person meeting, and then hit on that lead tracking.
So we're going to do some q and a and takeaways. I see that we've got some questions. Keep them coming. Share your takeaways, in there, and then I would just put this on the last slide.
Couple two things that I would most emphasize is I've got a podcast called Remodelers on the Rise.
So if you listen to podcasts, look that up. And probably most the biggest thing I would push you guys to, to take a look at is I have a private Facebook group. It's free of charge called Remodelers Community. If you go to Remodelers Community dot com, it'll take you to that page where you can request it. I think we're pushing about five hundred remodelers now, and the level and quantity and, of just really, really solid advice and ideas that not only is it just me sharing, but it's a lot of just really quality remodelers.
So be sure to look that up if you're, if you're interested in that. Alright, Alex. Send me some questions.
Awesome. Yeah. So let's get to John who's been patiently waiting here.
So he's asking if you've got a process, how do you prevent the client from sharing the process with other contractors?
So you can approach it that way and not put it on your website. And, boy, I could email this to them, but, you know, they might be talking to another contractor, and they might forward it over to them. You could approach it like that. And if you approach it that way, it's going to limit the value of having the the process.
Or you could approach it like, you know what? There's nothing new under the sun. The good book tells us that, and my competitors might get a hold of this one way or another. Frankly, they might just flat out copy this.
Worst case scenario, that could happen. But I approach it from, you know what? There's so much more value in me just putting it on my website. It is helping differentiate myself.
It is helping, educate the homeowner. I'm going to put it in the email. I'm going to talk to them about it, and you make it your own. And guess what?
If your competitor I've literally, first of all, I've never seen a competitor just flat out copy it. But secondly, if somebody just flat out copied it, it's just straight up plagiarism.
I'm going to pick up the phone and say, hey, bud.
Like, we've had this process out there for a couple years. I appreciate it's you know, that you liked it, but you need you need to take it down. I mean, that's the worst case scenario, but what I would emphasize is don't even worry about it. Don't even think about it.
You just focus on you. We worry too much about our competitors, I think, a lot of times. Every minute, we need to be aware of them. We need to understand what they're doing, and we need to continue to help, you know, increase our game, our ability, our salesmanship.
But, man, every ten minutes we spend sitting on a competitor's website is ten minutes that we didn't spend improving our own marketing, writing that blog post, going out and taking a quick video that shows your job site cleanliness. You know, there's so much better use of your time. So be aware of it, but don't negate it from posting and publishing it. There's so much more upside to getting it out there, John.
Right. And just to sidetrack for a second, we're getting a lot of questions about this recording. Absolutely. This recording will be available. Give us a couple hours to get it uploaded, and then I'm going to send everybody an email that was here today with, link to that recording as well as a blog post write up. So, you guys will absolutely have this recording to share with your staff, and anybody else, and you're more than welcome to do so.
But back to John's point here. So Sean had a point to John's point, about selling the jobs. You know, if you're selling the jobs well, it doesn't really matter if you've got that process on your website publicly.
You know, just kind of a, you know, a little feedback there.
Yeah.
I think that's I think that's similar to and then Amanda was noting that she used a professional services agreement.
You know, the homeowner wanted a whole house remodel, but got no response, but she will use it again.
So I'm I'm thinking maybe the lead just ran cold on that one, but definitely recommend using that.
What I would share with that is, number one, more than anything else, way to go and actually present it. That is so huge. It is so huge to actually have the courage and the guts and the wherewithal to say, I'm going to actually present this to the homeowner. That is a huge step.
Guess what? Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it does. But the biggest thing I would say on it, one, what works and what didn't work?
Could you have presented it better? I think because I know because I know Amanda. She's their client of mine. I think we kinda shared it with them too late in the process.
They need to hear about it on that initial call. They need to hear about it at the initial meeting versus a little bit later. So that may have played a role when we did what works, what didn't work. But the biggest thing here is, the thing I see so often is the people that say, you know, thank you for that.
You gave me a free estimate, kinda that range. Let me think it over on the design agreement. Guess what? Those people are the people that are already most likely going to say no to you after you give them ten hours of your free time in putting together a proposal.
I have very, very rarely ever heard a client of mine say a remodel of mine say, man, I wish I didn't have that professional services agreement because, if I didn't, I would have got that job. No. So often the people that aren't interested or that don't go forward with the design agreement are the people that probably weren't going to sign with you to start with. So keep that in mind.
And just keep getting better at it. Like, I'm I I used to be a really crappy golfer. Now I'm a marginally good golfer, and, frankly, it takes practice like anything in life like anything in life. Right?
You gotta try and you gotta make it better and and you get better by doing, not by sitting back and thinking about it.
So Right.
Yeah. And then just a quick note from CJ. Just saying a design agreement is good. It creates buy in, shows the customer is serious.
Yeah. Absolutely, CJ. And then, we had a question about what's your preferred CRM, Kyle? Do you have any, you know, preferences in that area?
Yeah. I mean, it's it's a, I think you I think I saw where you mentioned, like, HubSpot. You know, Market Sharp is out there, it's one that some of my clients use. More and more because I did a lot of CRM work over the years. More and more, if you're using BuilderTrend, if you're using Co construct, if you're using UDA, which more remodelers and builders are doing, what that CRM in there, the sales pipeline part, doesn't have some cool automation features like some other programs do. Boy, it's nice to have everything under one roof, where so if, you know, if you're using any kind of project, you know, a project management software like that, you know, utilize this the CRM that's already built in into that.
Right.
And, you know, related to the CRM, you mentioned about ten minutes ago, are there any prospects you need to follow-up with today? And that's something we can keep track of in the CRM. So in each users or not users, but customer's pipeline, you can see the last correspondence. You know, are they going cold? Do we need to follow-up with them? So just another great aspect for the CRM there.
Yep.
Oh, let's see here.
We got Alec had Alec had Alec had some some tough words.
I agree. Let them have my info, that process thing. They don't have my sales ability, which is true.
Don't underestimate confidence in our in our you know, as far as our success factors. Confidence is so big. And if you don't feel confident, you may want to look for a different profession, Alex said.
Boom.
Spitting Very good.
Truth. Or just get better. Yep.
Amanda, so presented physically, by physically bringing it to them at their home rather than mailing or emailing. Absolutely. We want to make it, you know, if we if we had that conversation over the phone, that initial email, maybe we link to that to show to let them see it and kinda how it works. It's not going to be filled out, you know, completely, but it gives them an idea.
And, absolutely, bring that out to them to that initial in person meeting because if we if things go according to how we'd want it to, our goal would be to educate them on that, to share a lot of ideas, to convince, them that we're just a really good fit for this. And there's a lot of my remodeling clients that leave that initial in person meeting with a with a check for six hundred dollars or eight hundred dollars or four hundred dollars and a signed professional services agreement. Absolutely. How detailed should a design agreement be?
Do you have any examples?
I do have examples.
Edward, if you want to post your, your email address in there, I'd be happy to email that one to you.
We have been using a letter of intents and a fee for estimates. It's not perfect, but I don't want to give my time away for free. I have asked clients for photos to discuss scope and budget. Good, Jen.
You know, there's not one way to do this. That's actually, it's kinda one of the things I love about our industry is is there isn't one answer. It it does depend on how your business is set up. It does depend on your staffing.
It does depend on your ideal projects that you do.
You know, there's not one way to do it, Jim. So if that's you know, do that. Use it. But if it's not you say it's not perfect, continue to look for how can I improve this?
How can I make it better? But I'm tired of giving away my time for free. It is valuable. My time is valuable.
I am providing a service. Continue to lean into that and then see what that looks like as far as how you how you engage and how you interact with your homeowner. John said Zoho for CRM. Yeah.
So, you know, Zoho is good. Zoho is one where, you know, like any CRM system, it's going to have the ability to to create your sales pipeline, those different steps I had. There's going to be some ability to send email or send tasks. Zoho is a very solid CRM system, but it's also one that you're going to have to kinda customize.
Right? It's just a off the shelf from a from a CPA. If I'm an attorney, I could also use Zoho. So there's going to be a little customization to it, but it can work just fine, John.
Cool. Awesome. Well, I think that does it for the questions. I know we're we're a couple minutes past the hour here. Is that is that everything for you, Kyle?
It's everything.
Awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks again everyone for joining us. This has been a fantastic presentation. We're definitely sad to see you go, Kyle, these last few weeks here and couple presentations have been, you know, really quite fun and and enjoyable.
We're going to have the recording available for both this webinar and the previous one that Kyle did a couple weeks back, on our website. And we'll send out an email to everybody that was here just kind of recapping what happened as well as the recording. And then we've got another couple of webinars coming up here, in two weeks on March twenty sixth. We're going to be talking about the markup with Michael Stone.
And then on April ninth, a couple weeks after, we're going to be talking about accounting best practices, just in time for the tail end of tax season.
But, yeah, this was a fantastic presentation. We really appreciate the engagement, some awesome questions, and thanks everyone for joining us.
Thank you!